Elections in Florida are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in even-numbered years, as provided for in Article 6 of theFlorida Constitution.[1]For state elections, theGovernor of Florida, Lieutenant Governor, and the members of the Florida Cabinet, and members of theFlorida Senate are elected every four years; members of theFlorida House of Representatives are elected every two years.
In a 2020 study, Florida was ranked as the 11th hardest state for citizens to vote in.[2]
All citizens of the United States, over the age of eighteen and who are permanent residents of the state, may register to vote as a qualifiedelector of Florida unless they are convicted of afelony or found to bementally incompetent.
| Year | Democratic | Republican |
|---|---|---|
| 1952 | 74.8%624,463 | 25.2%210,009 |
| 1956 | 73.7%747,753 | 26.3%266,980 |
| 1960 | 59.8%849,407 | 40.1%569,936 |
| 1964 | 56.1%933,554 | 41.3%686,297 |
| 1966 | 44.9%668,233 | 55.1%821,190 |
| 1970 | 56.9%984,305 | 43.1%746,243 |
| 1974 | 61.2%1,118,954 | 38.8%709,438 |
| 1978 | 55.6%1,406,580 | 44.4%1,123,888 |
| 1982 | 64.7%1,739,553 | 35.3%949,013 |
| 1986 | 45.4%1,538,620 | 54.6%1,847,525 |
| 1990 | 56.5%1,995,206 | 43.5%1,535,068 |
| 1994 | 50.8%2,135,008 | 49.2%2,071,068 |
| 1998 | 44.7%1,773,054 | 55.3%2,191,105 |
| 2002 | 43.2%2,201,427 | 56.0%2,856,845 |
| 2006 | 45.1%2,178,289 | 52.2%2,519,845 |
| 2010 | 47.7%2,557,785 | 48.9%2,619,335 |
| 2014 | 47.1%2,801,198 | 48.1%2,865,343 |
| 2018 | 49.2%4,043,723 | 49.6%4,076,186 |
| 2022 | 40.0%3,105,469 | 59.4%4,613,783 |
TheGovernor of Florida, Lieutenant Governor, and the members of the Florida Cabinet are elected every four years. Members of theFlorida House of Representatives are elected every two years, while members of theFlorida Senate are elected every four years.
Candidates for theFlorida legislature may serve no more than 2 consecutive terms (8 years) as Senator, or 4 consecutive terms (8 years) as Representative.
Voters determine whether judges at the state level should be retained, at the end of their respective term. Since this law was enacted in 1974, no judge has ever been removed from office by failure of retention.[4]
Florida received international attention for its role in the2000 presidential election, whereGeorge W. Bush ledAl Gore by only a couple of hundred votes when theSupreme Court of the United States ended a recount. It had also played a role in the equally contested1876 presidential election and was seen as one of the key swing states in presidential elections until the 2024 presidential election.[5] Today, it is considered a reliably Republican state in state and national elections.[6]
Florida held its 2008presidential primary on January 29, 2008, after a bill was passed in May 2007 moving it sooner on the electoral calendar.[7] This move was in violation of party rules restricting primaries held before February 5 to Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Democratic Party eventually decided to strip Florida of all its 210 delegates at the Democrats' convention, while the Republicans stripped Florida of half its delegates to the GOP convention. A federal judge dismissed a suit from Democratic SenatorBill Nelson against theDNC and chairmanHoward Dean to overturn this decision.[8]
| Year | Republican / Whig | Democratic | Third party(ies) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | |
| 1848 | 4,120 | 57.20% | 3,083 | 42.80% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1852 | 2,875 | 39.97% | 4,318 | 60.03% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1856 | 0 | 0.00% | 6,358 | 56.81% | 4,833 | 43.19% |
| 1860 | 0 | 0.00% | 223 | 1.68% | 13,078 | 98.32% |
| 1872 | 17,763 | 53.52% | 15,427 | 46.48% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1876 | 23,849 | 50.99% | 22,927 | 49.01% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1880 | 23,654 | 45.83% | 27,964 | 54.17% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1884 | 28,031 | 46.73% | 31,769 | 52.96% | 190 | 0.32% |
| 1888 | 26,529 | 39.89% | 39,557 | 59.48% | 414 | 0.62% |
| 1892 | 0 | 0.00% | 30,153 | 85.01% | 5,318 | 14.99% |
| 1896 | 11,298 | 24.30% | 32,756 | 70.46% | 2,434 | 5.24% |
| 1900 | 7,355 | 18.55% | 28,273 | 71.31% | 4,021 | 10.14% |
| 1904 | 8,314 | 21.15% | 27,046 | 68.80% | 3,949 | 10.05% |
| 1908 | 10,654 | 21.58% | 31,104 | 63.01% | 7,602 | 15.40% |
| 1912 | 4,279 | 8.42% | 35,343 | 69.52% | 11,215 | 22.06% |
| 1916 | 14,611 | 18.10% | 55,984 | 69.34% | 10,139 | 12.56% |
| 1920 | 44,853 | 30.79% | 90,515 | 62.13% | 10,313 | 7.08% |
| 1924 | 30,633 | 28.06% | 62,083 | 56.88% | 16,438 | 15.06% |
| 1928 | 144,168 | 56.83% | 101,764 | 40.12% | 7,742 | 3.05% |
| 1932 | 69,170 | 25.04% | 206,307 | 74.68% | 775 | 0.28% |
| 1936 | 78,248 | 23.90% | 249,117 | 76.08% | 67 | 0.02% |
| 1940 | 126,158 | 25.99% | 359,334 | 74.01% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1944 | 143,215 | 29.68% | 339,377 | 70.32% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1948 | 194,280 | 33.63% | 281,988 | 48.82% | 101,375 | 17.55% |
| 1952 | 544,036 | 54.99% | 444,950 | 44.97% | 351 | 0.04% |
| 1956 | 643,849 | 57.27% | 480,371 | 42.73% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1960 | 795,476 | 51.51% | 748,700 | 48.49% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1964 | 905,941 | 48.85% | 948,540 | 51.15% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1968 | 886,804 | 40.53% | 676,794 | 30.93% | 624,207 | 28.53% |
| 1972 | 1,857,759 | 71.91% | 718,117 | 27.80% | 7,407 | 0.29% |
| 1976 | 1,469,531 | 46.64% | 1,636,000 | 51.93% | 45,100 | 1.43% |
| 1980 | 2,046,951 | 55.52% | 1,419,475 | 38.50% | 220,600 | 5.98% |
| 1984 | 2,730,350 | 65.32% | 1,448,816 | 34.66% | 885 | 0.02% |
| 1988 | 2,618,885 | 60.87% | 1,656,701 | 38.51% | 26,727 | 0.62% |
| 1992 | 2,173,310 | 40.89% | 2,072,698 | 39.00% | 1,068,384 | 20.10% |
| 1996 | 2,244,536 | 42.32% | 2,546,870 | 48.02% | 512,388 | 9.66% |
| 2000 | 2,912,790 | 48.85% | 2,912,253 | 48.84% | 138,067 | 2.32% |
| 2004 | 3,964,522 | 52.10% | 3,583,544 | 47.09% | 61,744 | 0.81% |
| 2008 | 4,046,219 | 48.10% | 4,282,367 | 50.91% | 83,662 | 0.99% |
| 2012 | 4,163,447 | 49.03% | 4,237,756 | 49.90% | 90,972 | 1.07% |
| 2016 | 4,617,886 | 48.60% | 4,504,975 | 47.41% | 379,886 | 4.00% |
| 2020 | 5,668,731 | 51.11% | 5,297,045 | 47.76% | 125,982 | 1.14% |
| 2024 | 6,110,125 | 55.87% | 4,683,038 | 42.82% | 142,302 | 1.30% |
In the first half of the 19th century, the right to vote was held only by white males aged 21 and over. After 1920, women were able to vote with the passing of theNineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1937, the requirement to pay apoll tax was repealed by the state legislature, allowing poorer Floridians to vote, and in 1944 theUnited States Supreme Court invalidated a system of white-only primary elections.[9]
Florida was originally part of theSolid South, as Democrats overwhelmingly won state and federal elections during the hundred years following the Civil War. However, in 1937, the requirement to pay apoll tax was repealed by the state legislature, allowing poorer Floridians to vote, and coupled with a growing tourist industry in the mid-20th century that attracted Northern retirees, the state became electorally competitive earlier than the rest of the South. Since 1928, the state has only voted for the losing presidential candidate three times, all for losing Republicans in 1960, 1992, and 2020.[10] In 1966,Claude Kirk was elected the firstRepublican governor of Florida sinceReconstruction.[11] This was followed in 1968, with Republicans winning a Senate seat in the state for the first time since Reconstruction.
TheFlorida Elections Commission was established in 1973. In 2005, Jeb Bush signed a bill to abolish primary runoff elections,[12] resulting in all primary and general elections being determined by plurality rather than majority.
The state is dominated by Republicans on the state level, as Democrats have not held the governorship or either house of the legislature since 1999. Republicans currently have veto-proof majorities in both houses of the Florida legislature.[13] However, the state has become increasingly Republican since the late 2010s, as in 2018, Republicans captured both Senate seats in the state for the first time since Reconstruction.[14] In 2020, Florida voted 7.8 points right of the nation as a whole, the furthest it has voted from the nation since 1988, and it was the first election since 1992 that Florida backed the losing candidate. In 2022, Republicans won their largest statewide victories since Reconstruction and neared 60% of the vote. In 2021, registered Republicans surpassed Democrats for the first time in state history.[15]
On August 8, 2018Senator Bill Nelson told theTampa Bay Times that Florida's voting system had been penetrated by Russian hacking efforts. Senator Nelson noted that the likely target of hacking efforts wasvoter rolls for the state.[16]
DuringDEF CON 26 in 2018, an 11-year-old reportedly hacked into a Florida state election website replica in just 10 minutes by taking advantage of expiredSSL certificates. The participants of this event also discovered vulnerabilities of the state voting machines via the memory card and rendering a voter's ballot invalid.[17]
InMay 2019, RepublicanFlorida GovernorRon DeSantis announcedRussians hacked voting databases in two Florida counties prior to the2016 presidential election and no election results were compromised.[18][19][20]
The following statistics show party affiliation of registered Florida voters:
Both parties are waging legal battles around the country over who gets to vote and how
State legislation related to the administration of elections introduced in 2011 through this year, 2020
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